Body-ody-ody

Does anyone else get a song stuck in their head and then have it there the entirety of writing their blog post? No? Just me? Ok then. . .

I posed a question yesterday for the members of my survivorship Facebook group, and I thought I’d answer it here because I have lots to say (shocker). The question was “what is your relationship like with your body now that you’ve had this diagnosis?” (and for caregivers in the group, I asked if they’ve noticed a change in their loved ones as it relates to their relationship with their body).

Everyone who goes through a diagnosis has a different experience based on personality, previous medical conditions, culture, age, religion/spirituality, ethnicity, gender, sex, previous interactions with the medical community, etc. However, many of us experience the same overarching challenges, I think, and one of those is how we feel about our physical bodies after a diagnosis.

For me, there are a few challenges that relate to this particular issue:

• Trust
• Function
• Aesthetic changes

Trust

This body somehow, for some reason that even the brightest medical doctors and researchers have yet to figure out, one day started making rogue cells that would have eventually killed me.

WTF, BODY?! I thought we were a TEAM?!

I treated you well(ish), never smoked, didn’t drink a ton of alcohol (lets not count ages 21-23), tried my best to eat healthy foods and drink lots of water and wear sunscreen and get regular check-ups and all the things I was supposed to do. And still you betrayed me. RUDE.

In all seriousness, that is what it feels like though: a betrayal. And unlike a relationship with another person, I can’t get away from it. I have to face that head on and learn to accept it and continue loving this body because its the only one I have. It has taken me almost 5 years to not immediately become suspicious of every single ache, bump, itch, or discoloration. I’ve had to learn how to walk a very fine line between becoming overly paranoid and still paying attention for potentially serious clues of a problem.

I have to trust that the physical Stef and the spiritual Stef can both work together to stick around on this planet for as long as possible. And that is HARD WORK after what happened. I didn’t wake up one day and think “I want to feel better so I do, now.” It has been and still is a slow, purposeful process of scanning my body for signs, thanking it for all it has endured, and trusting. That’s something that Stef BC (before cancer, for those new here) never had to worry about.

Function

This one might be the hardest for me next to trust, but its hard to choose sometimes between this and aesthetics. My body does not function the same as it did before the surgeries and radiation, and some days this causes feelings like anger and fear. I’m angry because at my age, I should be able to do more with less pain. I should still be able to work at the bedside, go for more arduous hikes, paddle a kayak easily. . .but fear of injury and pain hold me back from regaining strength. It just plain SUCKS. And I’d be lying if I said I’m not worried about my future as a single person with functional difficulties. I don’t let it run my life, but sometimes the “what if’s” about how I’m going to function get very loud.

Aesthetic Changes

And yes, the aesthetics, things people want to pretend don’t matter but they really do. My face is lopsided when my lymphedema gets bad. I have massive scars. And, related to both function and aesthetics, I miss my freaking voice. I miss being able to sing (fairly) well and I miss being able to roll my R’s (so much for all those years of Spanish). To someone who hasn’t had to deal with loss of these things, I can see why they’d think I should just be grateful I have what I have. . .and I am! I am ridiculously grateful that I had the best surgeons in the world who gave me SO much back in function and aesthetics and saved my life. But two opposing feelings can exist in the same person.

What I think it all boils down to, honestly, is shame. In our world, for whatever reason, we’re taught to believe we have to be constantly happy and if we’re not, we’re ungrateful and should be ashamed of ourselves.

We’re taught that the world is black and white, this or that, there is no in between – – and that’s a straight out lie. The world is gray, everything exists on a spectrum, and duality is a very real thing.

I think once we learn to accept that we can feel more than one emotion at a time, it starts to get easier accepting everything that happened and integrating all the changes into our new lives and healing the relationship we have with our bodies. We can be grateful and angry. We can love our bodies for keeping us alive but also distrust our bodies for creating cancer in the first place. Humans are complex, and we are also adaptive and that is how we thrive. The more we accept that good and bad things can exist simultaneously, the easier it becomes to move forward.

After all, rain falls when the sun shines sometimes, and you know what happens then?

Rainbows appear.